You Get a Lifetime
by breampol
Summary: HP/Sandman (Ch 1-3), HP/RWBY (Ch 4-9). Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.
1. Ch01 Not in Kansas

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 1: Not in Kansas**

Harry James Potter-Black, Boy-Who-Lived, vanquisher of the Dark Lord He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, billionaire, avid broom flier, husband, father, Head Auror, and holder of a dozen more titles, paced in his study and reflected.

Our protagonist had inherited the titles and Galleons from two Very Old Families, and donated substantial sums towards charitable causes. On occasion, he flew around his estate with skill that made Quidditch head-hunters salivate. He was married to a beautiful redheaded witch who did England proud in international Quidditch games and charmed magazines with her impeccable taste in clothes. Two children with his trademark unruly hair were the de facto leaders of the schoolyard, and showed signs of being powerfully magical. Soon after graduation, Harry was accepted into the Auror Academy. His training camp, career and subsequent meteoric rise to become Head Auror were covered in great detail by hungry journalists.

A Galleon weaved and danced between the young man's fingers.

Moments ago, Luna had popped by unannounced and launched into yet another spiel on various fantastical flora and fauna. Both of them knew it was absolute tosh but she loved to share her imaginary world, and he never tired of listening about it. Abruptly stopping mid-sentence, Luna circled her best friend widdershins, eyed every square inch of his clothes and placed a few pieces of lint on his shoulder, before giving him a gentle and wistful hug.

"To thine own self be true. I will miss you, Harry Potter," she had whispered tearfully, before vanishing with a soft 'pop'.

In contrast to the unmarred obverse, the reverse had vicious, deliberate gouges which would have driven a Gringotts goblin purple with rage. Ignoring the felony of defacing Wizarding currency, Harry pondered the blonde's parting words, and flipped the coin. Narrowing his eyes at the marked surface which now faced up, he reflected once more, truthfully.

Harry Potter lived an empty, almost robotic life. He donated money to the rash of charities which had cropped up after his first philanthropic attempt, because he had few needs or wants to spend it on. He drifted randomly on his broom as an excuse to be away from family and the public. His wife was shameless and he had heard rumours of foreign Quidditch stars confirming that her carpets matched her drapes. Despite his efforts to discipline his children, they were pampered by the public and paparazzi that stalked them, and they bullied other children using their fists and bouts of not-quite-accidental magic.

Auror work had been enjoyable. During boot camp, the drill sergeants had treated him no differently from the other recruits. His amused superiors had turned a blind eye when he interacted with the public under a glamour spell, because he still got the job done, without getting the office inundated with post owls bringing a hundred congratulatory notes per incident. Yet despite his protests, his excellent track record and an adoring public only conspired to speed up his promotion through the ranks. He became Head Auror, was hounded even more by ravenous reporters, was not allowed to hide under glamour spells during press conferences, and had close to no interaction with the lay people who needed help.

 _That's enough_ , he told himself sharply. _My life isn't perfect, but brooding will solve nothing._

His gaze fell on a nondescript drawer, where he knew the Resurrection Ring and Elder Wand sat on a neatly folded Invisibility Cloak. In the months following the Final Battle, he had noticed several odd phenomena.

Ghosts would panic and speed away the moment he entered their vicinity. Even the Hogwarts ghosts, who had been on speaking terms with him previously, refused to be near him.

Spells cast using the Elder Wand or his own wand of holly and phoenix feather would randomly take on the unmistakable Avada Kedavra green, although thankfully, the spell effects were unaffected.

The Resurrection Ring would, at times, mimic the effect of a Dementor and severely frighten the people nearby, while having no noticeable effect on Harry.

Most of the other abnormalities were subtle enough to escape public notice yet made Harry no less cross. Out of sheer frustration, and on Luna's suggestion, he had chastised the three tools of unimaginable power, given them a thorough washing and ordered them to keep their opinions to themselves until he was ready to take up his destiny. The abnormalities became less frequent.

Harry felt his heart pound as he flipped the coin once more.

Within a minute, he was striding purposefully out the door, clad in the Hallows as they were meant to be worn.

* * *

He stood before a Veil, in the Veil Room, in the Department of Mysteries, in the British Ministry of Magic.

The Elder Wand swished once, and the mortal-made Holly wand and goblin-minted Galleon ceased to exist.

He stepped into the Veil.

* * *

Harry emerged in an unfamiliar, rectangular room. It was the size, he estimated, of an average Hogwarts classroom. It had two unremarkable wooden doors, one through which Harry had entered and another on the wall diametrically opposite. On a third wall hung seven paintings and the final wall was blank. A few beanbags were haphazardly strewn over the floor, but there was otherwise no furniture.

Sinking comfortably onto a dark blue beanbag, he studied the eclectic paintings.

A reddish jewel in the shape of a heart…

A helmet which resembled a skull…

A ring with a viciously-shaped hook…

An aged-looking book several times as thick as Hogwarts a His…

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they tell me to babysit yet another dunderhead who managed to bottle fame, brew glory and even stopper death…"

 _Snape?_ Harry thought as he turned to face the grumbling voice.

Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts, terror of the dungeons was tall, black-haired, greasy, hook-nosed and resembled an overgrown bat. The being which had entered the room was short, had a spotless, spherical white head, no nose, and looked like a cross between a panda and a popsicle.

Their voices were uncannily similar and Harry prayed that in his infinitely poor luck, he had not entered Heaven - or Hell - as the plaything of a dysmorphic Severus Snape.

Several uncomfortable moments passed as Harry's green eyes stared at the being's triangular, pupil-less green eyes, and he lost the impromptu staring contest.

"Who are you? What are you?"

The being continued to stare.

"I'm Harry Potter. You must be…?"

"My name is Marvin. I am an android."

Silence ensured.

"Are you… uh… here to show me around?"

"I suppose I could show you your quarters, if you insist," was the morose reply.

A door opened with a cheerful chime, at which the android winced before walking out the door, dragging its feet all the way. Harry shook his head and followed.

* * *

"So where are we?"

The android halted in its tracks and slowly turned to face the exasperated young man, before palming his face with a half-hearted 'clunk'.

"Oh no… You are one of those toddlers who became a Master of Death knowing absolutely nothing, are you not? And here I thought the Boss sent me, hoping that the sight of someone more wretched than yourself would fix your self-pity…"

Harry felt a massive headache beginning to build.

* * *

It took several days before Harry wheedled enough information out of the thrice-damned majorly depressed hunk of metal to form a clear picture of his situation, and Marvin grudgingly declared that he was ready to meet the Boss.

Marvin had been manufactured by Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, fitted with Genuine People Personalities (GPP) technology, and was currently over five hundred and seventy six billion years old. Harry privately thought that if he had been manufactured by his godfather's namesake, with a chronically pessimistic disposition, as a nigh-immortal bowling ball with Snape's drawl, he would be very, very upset too.

Harry learnt of the Endless, personifications of reality that governed their own Realms.

Despair had been enamoured of the sulky android since their first meeting and periodically tried to coax him into her Realm of mirrors and rodents. She had once sent him a rat which, after tolerating several days of his regular diatribe, had crawled into a cavity in his right ankle and died.

Delirium, Harry decided, was Luna Lovegood raised to the power of Luna Lovegood and divided by zero. For a brief period, Delirium had dated the number Pi, but found out that he was two-timing her with a rational number. Highly displeased, she had challenged Pi to the Pocky game, won convincingly, and branded the ASCII code for her name onto Pi's numerical makeup.

Destiny, Destruction, Desire and Dream also had duties that accurately reflected their names.

Death had marked Harry Potter as her property the moment he had gathered the three Hallows, and waited patiently until he would enter her Realm to carry out his responsibilities. She was the second eldest of the Endless after Destiny and was a considerably Big Cheese in the grand scheme of things. As Marvin led Harry down the last corridor, he stated with surprising pride that Death was a Very Nice Lady and a more than adequate Boss, and that he would be rather upset if Harry made her upset.

 **Chapter 1 End**


	2. Ch02 Pointy Haired Boss Lady

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 2: Pointy Haired Boss Lady**

Death, her underlings eventually learn, is fair. Mortals may rage that Death is unfair, but it takes an outside perspective to appreciate her fairness - Death collects every mortal soul exactly once.

Death is a harsh taskmaster, but she would sooner give her underlings a breather than work them to dea- well, to the bone. She knows that good help is hard to come by. Strict with the essential tasks, and supportive of their leisure, she reasons that while her infinite self can be beset with infinite work, her assistants are of finite make, albeit capable, and deserve finite burdens.

Death also currently appears female. In the last poll on workplace satisfaction, an infinite number of employees requested that Death appear 'Male', and an infinite number ticked 'Female', but infinitely more had opted for 'Female' over 'Male'. Until the next poll, she has chosen to don a perfectly generic female body clad in conservative garments, her trademark Ankh on a necklace like a nun's rosary. She looks perfect, and her employees adore her.

One might think that the Boss Lady has always been this agreeable, but this is not the case. There is a cautionary tale whispered among the denizens of Death's Realm of the old time when Death was frightful to behold and nigh impossible to work with. It is told so that recruits know not to do something tremendously stupid enough to test Death's tremendous patience, and it is told quietly so that she is not embarrassed by the mood swings of her distant puberty.

Since the first soul appeared on mortal plains, Death has been tasked with ensuring that deaths happen as they should, and recording every death meticulously. Who gave her the task, and who reads the records? Not even Death herself knows. What she quickly found out was that her workload grew explosively in a spectacular approximation of the Fibonacci series.

A frazzled Death personally interviewed and brought in servants from other Realms - Death, on her own, being unable to create souls - but they were few and far between. As the pile of work increased, her temper worsened.

One bright and sunny day, Delirium bounced into Death's Realm and entreated her elder sister to take a break. The servants, having long worried about their employer's health and craving this breath of fresh air in her increasingly stormy Realm, bore witness as the younger Lady dug deep into her bag of tricks.

She spewed rhetoric in the not-yet-invented language of Classical Latin. She floated strawberries and cookies around the room. She tamed the Cerberus with singing chocolate and got it to aim its doleful eyes on Death. She fished out puppy dog eyes and a mournful face from the bag of tricks and laid them on the table in order of size. She proved on a chalkboard that going on hiatus would not make the infinite work more infinite.

All that this achieved was an increasingly violent twitch of Death's eyebrow. At the end of her tether, Delirium narrowed her eyes and all the props vanished. With a faint scowl, her eyes flashed a symmetrical brown, and to the utter astonishment of all present, she plucked Death out of Death's own Realm and they disappeared for a few eons.

The sisters would reappear refreshed, sweaty and inebriated. As Death recovered from her hangover, Delirium regaled the staff with a highly vivid account on how they had visited a planet with uncommonly handsome and knobbly mountains, and proceeded to make them erupt until they could erupt no more. In the process they might or might not have overloaded Desire's monitoring equipment, moistened the mountainsides enough to support evergreen forests, and inspired a few creation myths.

So it was that Death became more open minded. Sufficiently distracted from the immediate misery of her daily drudgery, she drew up plans to create Minions. Various discussions with her servants gave birth to the system of the Deathly Hallows.

It was partly a game, partly an experiment. Every parallel universe - for all universes contain life, and the end of any life is within Death's purview - was given three objects, and a Story regarding the three. A sentient mortal soul who gathered the three items would be considered by Death herself for employment. If she judged that soul to be acceptable, it would be granted a miniscule fraction of Death's own power and responsibility.

Someone suggested that the legends should, in the native tongues, call the candidates Masters of Death, and not Minions of Death. This would impart a professional image, and also prevent little children from fighting for the opportunity to ask Death for fluffy unicorns. All present shuddered and agreed.

In some worlds, the system ran into problems. Time might erase the legend from mortal memory. Or, a spacefaring society might separate the Hallows beyond hope of recovery. Or, the Hallows might by sheer chance never be gathered. However, the system by and large worked well and succeeded in bringing a considerable number of candidates before Death.

By the rules of the system, the Minions of Death were her slaves, hers to repossess and command on a whim. In practice, she loved every one of her approved Minions to bits, and became their mentor, parent, sibling or even a partner for the more daring and frisky ones. All the Minions respected her.

Harry never regretted leaving Earth to work for Lady Death of the Endless.

 **Chapter 2 End**


	3. Ch03 Other Worlds Hypothesis

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 3 Other Worlds Hypothesis**

No one will describe this Realm as Deathly quiet. It is chaotic, but it is smoothly so.

Almost every parallel universe will be assigned a Minion each day, and each Minion periodically receives a roster detailing their workplaces for the next few days. Some universes are busier and require additional Minions, while several under-populated universes can be handled by one Minion. Emergence of new Minions does not match the retirement of old ones, so the workforce is constantly in flux. Time off or vacation leave further complicates the deployment of Minions.

It is a minor miracle that the roster mechanism has kept the Realm of Death running for such a long time with no major hiccups. Marvin will dejectedly admit that such a calculation is far beyond his abilities. Perhaps Death has convinced a MULTIVAC in hyperspace to perform this tedious task, but when questioned on the existence of such a computer, she will merely smile mysteriously, neither confirming nor denying it. In her infinite wisdom, Death knows that if her computer is found, some enterprising Minion will install every video game known to Man, and another will download every adult video known to Woman, and work in the Realm of Death will grind to a squelching halt.

At the individual level, a Minion has several core functions.

The first key task is to exhaustively record the demise of every souled being. Demographics such as the species, age and cause of death must be documented precisely. Recommendations for reincarnation can be jotted down, but few bother with this, because reincarnation is primarily governed by karma, and karma is earned and expended across several lifetimes. The death certificates are collected and archived by an unknown mechanism. Perhaps they are processed by the lawyers in Hell, before being digitized by the engineers in Heaven.

The second key task is to be a psychopomp. Most souls instinctively know how to snap the last filaments binding their astral and physical bodies, before following the glowing arrows shepherding them to the Afterlife. A few need to be taught, and a few need to be convinced that they are dead and not dreaming. A fair few are curious or rebellious enough to wander off the paths. Minions of Death need to ensure that all souls are accounted for. Ghosts are the exception: ghosts are souls who, by a quirk of fate, have died at the correct time but need to complete some tasks in their ectoplasmic form, before proceeding moving on.

The third and final key task is to make sure that deaths are appropriate. All Minions, through Death, have a faint connection to Destiny's famous Book, by which they identify whoever must or must not die at a certain time. Mortals may attempt to cheat death by several means, including magicks of time, blood or the soul; they may die prematurely through suicide, murder or idiocy. Whatever the reason, Minions are empowered to use their wits and skills to find loopholes and affect situations not dictated by Destiny's Book, because while Destiny does not micro-manage the worlds, that which _is_ written in the Book _must_ come to pass.

* * *

Harry could never grasp the sheer scale of this Death business, and indeed none but the Endless can truly comprehend a limitless thing, but he learnt to roll with it. Early on, Death and Marvin had tried to explain how there are infinitely many Minions, and among them infinite Harry Potters and infinite Tom Riddles and infinite Cornelius Fudges. Seeing his discomfort, Death chuckled, ruffled his hair and advised him not to dwell too much on the issue - his consciousness and processing power had been expanded to near-Divine levels befitting a Minion's station, but they were still finite. Inability to master advanced mathematics did not stop Minions from performing their roles.

With forty-odd years of life experience under his belt when he had stepped through the Veil, all of them being spent under narrow-minded relatives or a narrow-minded society, he knew he was a pipsqueak. This did not stop him from socializing with the other employees.

"We are all in this together," he had been told. "We've been given much more time than a regular human to learn and live, until we tire and decide to die. You joined us in your adulthood. Some joined us as children, and some as fossils. Those roles will stay with you somewhat, but you will have opportunities enough to try being young or old by your own actions. Even the child Minion can, after a few centuries, berate a new octogenarian Minion like he's a whippersnapper."

Interestingly enough, the Deathly Hallows, which were often pinnacles of magical might in the mortal world, were of little use in Death's Realm. Their powers were mundane there, and the items were far more interesting as conversation pieces. For example, Minions could share their journey in gathering the Hallows, or how they ended up with the vaunted objects without any intent or foreknowledge at all. Alternatively, they could compare their versions of the Hallows Story and admire the different forms the Hallows took in each universe.

The Cloaks of Invisibility did not hide one from Death. At their core, they interfered with light and senses, creating the effect of invisibility. Instead of shielding wearers from Death's eyes, they marked them as Minion candidates, and Death would invite them to her Realm if she liked them and they were ready to leave home.

The Resurrection Rings did not revive the dead or facilitate the creation of undead beings. Souls, he was taught, were either alive, on their way to the Afterlife, in the Afterlife awaiting reincarnation, or ghosts permitted by fate to linger after death and before entering the Afterlife. The Rings could pull ghosts of the same world from wherever they were and force them to be visible, with no compulsion to tell the truth or obey orders.

The Deathsticks, or Wands of Power, were amplifiers of energy. Used as magical foci, they increased the intensity of magical spells, without preferring light or dark magicks. They did not speak with or otherwise influence their wielders - mortals who insisted so were simply touched in the head.

Variations of the Hallows Story interested Harry greatly. Long denied the wonders of television, computer games or literary fiction, he listened with rapt attention when other Minions described their home worlds. There was an official monthly gathering in Death's own tea room, and several Minions also hosted smaller fan clubs to share and celebrate the myriad versions of the Story. A side benefit of these sessions was that the more you heard and shared, the better you became at listening and speaking.

"Our Lady, on a whim, gave one world the Story but not the Hallows. The Story in its original words was whispered into the dreams of a tormented young author," said a Minion. "This she penned down, and framed in a story with words of her own - a shade less powerful than the Story, but a story it still was. The story crossed the seas and spoke to a similarly tormented young boy.

"Technology, this world had little, and magic much less so. But this boy, with the Story burnt into his heart, used his imagination, and crafted a world from silicon and electricity. He gave himself an unbeatable Wand in the guise of a sword and a protective Cloak he named the Immortal Object. Ten thousand people he smuggled into this world, telling them that Death walked its forests.

"Many of them died in his world, but here's the catch - he had fashioned this world within a world as An Incarnating Radius, or Aincrad, and thusly paid homage to the Ring one hundred times. When the ten thousandth person was dead, a hundred hundreds all told, they awoke, as if resurrected from a fever dream."

* * *

There is more to the Deathly Realm and its Minion community than the Hallows. Free time is scarce on most days, but when you live for an obscenely long time, there are abundant opportunities for various pursuits.

Harry dabbled in various Sciences and Arts, studying under enthusiasts who loved to teach. The act of learning for knowledge's sake, at a pace and to a limit he personally set, challenged his horizons. Even Minions who came from parallel worlds almost identical to his own were not spared from his curiosity - he learnt of the past, present and future Muggle and Magical societies of several Earths.

Interest groups existed for a gamut of hobbies, ranging from chess and cooking to yo-yos and yodelling. Harry's longest-lasting hobby turned out to be lawn bowling, with Atari games a close second. On occasion he coached newer Minions or joined discussions on how to unravel a particularly twisted conundrum of prophecies and magicks.

He tried his hand at Boggle and Scrabble but quickly left, never to return. All Minions were fitted with a Babel fish in their heads that permitted inter-language communication between any speaking beings. However, the arguments among Boggle or Scrabble players were uncommonly brutal due to a different language barrier. Everyone would insist that they had formed a valid word in their world's version of English, never mind that 'NRVNQSR' had only a vanishingly small chance of being an actual word in any world.

* * *

Another oddity of Death's Realm is that new souls cannot be created there. Non-sentient trees grow and die. Cells of a Minion's body divide and die in a natural dance of mitosis and apoptosis. Memes are created, and Conway's Game of Life can be played without error. Souls, however, never originate from this Realm.

This has a fascinating result that contraception is one hundred per cent effective. Freedom of thought, pseudo-immortality, enhanced healing and a mouth-watering selection of fellow Minions ensures that the nightlife is eternally vibrant. Death herself does not chastise that which does not disrupt the grand clockwork of her Realm, and also infrequently partakes in such outlets for stress relief.

The Realm of Death, one of several Endless points in time and space where all parallel worlds collide, truly is a thing of beauty.

 **Chapter 3 End**


	4. Ch04 Retirement Benefits

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 4 Retirement Benefits**

Years pass. It would be unfair to say they pass in the blink of an eye, for that does not do justice to the tenacity of Death's beloved Minions, who do good work, day in and day out, for a great many years. Even this microscopic fraction of eternity will drive an average mortal insane, but Death chooses her champions well, and they weather the millennia splendidly.

Even so, all Minions eventually retire. Their contract with Death does not promise or grant them immortality. It allows them to choose their final moments, showing Mastery over the natural fears and self-doubt that plague a sentient being pondering its existence and purpose. All Minions, bar none, are preternaturally calm when they finally decide to die.

* * *

Harry periodically kept tabs on his native dimension even as he commuted to countless other worlds.

Seismic activity, glacial in a mortal's eyes, was gracefully fluid on a geological time scale. Harry's Earth shifted its continents beyond recognition. Species appeared, but a great deal more became extinct. The diversity of flora and fauna was a pale shadow of what once was, but humans lived on. Civilizations waxed and waned, fed by various fuels and torn down by war or pestilence. Much culture vanished from living memory, and there was nobody alive who knew the Story or its retellings.

Tens of human generations ago, a politician had suggested mining Earth's sole Moon for platinum and gold. A decade-long arms race later, several nations landed their people on the Moon and began to drill down to its core. War broke out on Earth and the teams on the Moon similarly sabotaged each other, on the assumption that the winner would be able to finance any war debt. When the lunar teams accidentally blew up half of the moon, all involved were horrified that the moon held not a sliver of precious metal.

Magic changed in strange ways.

The ley lines had petered out, and the great underground currents of raw magic which veined the planet and fed Hogwarts, Stonehenge, Ayers Rock and other monuments no longer flowed. In a desperate, almost sentient, attempt to keep humanity alive, Magic had possessed and slowly transformed the deposits of humanity's fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - into a volatile, energetic kind of powder dubbed Dust. This colossal act of transfiguration depleted Magic itself, and magic no longer existed in the air, land or sea, all the way down to the Earth's core.

Magical species struggled to adapt during the gradual but inexorable loss of magic.

Wizards and witches found that there was increasingly less magic absorbed into their bodies from food, drink or air. They developed a ritual to bind an individual's remaining magic to his soul. To their chagrin, this created an inaccessible pool of energy tied to the soul, so divergent from existing magic that no spell could utilize or unlock it.

Furthermore, the body became indistinguishable from Muggles', bleeding and ageing with no protection by bodily magic. Many traditionalist Purebloods refused the procedure, but most of the Wizarding World hung their heads low and did the ritual, hoping that someday, their children's children would develop a technique or aria to unlock magic again.

Some species studied the humans' failure and admitted that while they could not do better, they could hardly do worse. Kneazles, March Hares, Minotaurs and several others approached humans under the guise of spirit animals, offering to magically incorporate their traits into the human genome. An unprecedented number of adolescents and LARPers consented. While the resultant nucleic acids held no magic, they stored a variety of traits ranging from the obvious, like ears and tails, to the subtle, like strength, stamina and night vision. Posterity would give rise to the Faunus races.

In a moment of wisdom and solidarity, dragons decided to stop breeding. Dragons live to protect treasure, and the greatest gem was the Earth. Earth would never regain its shine, and dragon-kind was too ashamed to bequeath it. Within a generation, there were no dragons. Many species used the vestiges of their magic to activate atavistic genes, opting to give up magic instead of their lives. Phoenixes became lyrebirds and merfolk became dugongs.

Dementors chose a more sordid path. They were unique among magical beings in having no soul. They fed on emotions and souls and utilized them as raw magic. This magic held together mundane, non-magical debris in the vague shape of a hooded humanoid, and granted rudimentary verbal communication. When a Dementor amassed sufficient magic, a pinch of magic and matter would bud off as a proto-Dementor, which would feed and grow.

When the Dementors worldwide sensed the waning magic, they gathered at most populous country and consumed every iota of human memory and soul. Transiently intelligent, the Hive rewrote the blueprint of the species. They would be of flesh and blood, soulless, with exactly two instincts - to devour and reproduce. They would have black hides, whose absorption of sunlight would suffice to maintain existence and basic locomotion. They would track souls by negative emotions, and consume them to gain additional power for reproduction.

As one, the altered Dementors departed in all directions and merged with any living animal they could find, gaining their flesh and blood, biochemical mechanisms for reproduction, and brains - brains with a potential for intelligence, given time. Bears, birds, boars, snakes, fish, wolves and more were painfully converted into the grotesque precursors of what humankind eventually called the Grimm.

Surprisingly, while the Story had been completely forgotten, a fair number of fairy tales remained, in no small part thanks to mothers who whispered them to their children while fathers fought war after war. The tales had small influences on naming or the Arts.

Many languages were lost, along with their cultures and contexts. The current civilization, encompassing four kingdoms and some smaller settlements, spoke one language with a minimum of dialects, and had one signed language. Very few, even among archaeologists, researched older languages. One particular word from a distant generation was understood by the entire world, because it hinted at the madness that had ravaged the world into its current state, and succinctly described the despair, guilt and anger at having to eke a living off the dregs of a once-great world.

The current world was named "Remnant".

* * *

With his home world not far from its final hurrah, and an admirably lengthy term as a Minion of Death under his belt, Harry decided it was time to retire. Meeting with Death, he discussed how and when he wished to die, submitted the necessary forms, and made his preparations. He had long been freed of any prophecies binding him to Destiny's Book, but this dying world still had a large number of future events that needed to match the Book. As a parting gift, he would tie up a few of the loose ends.

With a deftness and surefootedness borne of experience, he traversed time and space on Remnant holding his Hallows.

The Resurrection Ring very weakly attracted Grimm because the ghosts previously summoned by the ring left a faintly soul-like presence. He cast the Ring into a forest between two trees of yew and holly. In a few days, it would perch on a spike of a clueless Ursa Major. Huntsmen and Grimm would serendipitously find and lose the Ring until it ended up on the island of Patch, west of Vale.

Closing his eyes in concentration, he communicated his intent to the Elder Wand, which acquiesced and morphed into a plain needle. This needle he did place within an egg, which lay within a duck, which lay within a hare, which lay within a chest wrought in Blue Digizoid metal. He placed the chest in the gizzard of the largest Nevermore in Atlas. Eventually, the Nevermore would swallow a careless Huntsman, who would then cut his way out of the gizzard and reveal chest's secrets. The innocuous needle would change hands in a bizarre series of murders before reaching the owner of a small dust mining company.

Applying a glamour spell, Harry approached a mountaineer hiding out a snowstorm in a cave. She had been challenging the tallest peak of Mistral, and now curled up freezing on the unforgiving ground. Harry silently commanded his Cloak of Invisibility to lock down its primary function of hiding from the visible spectrum, only to be reactivated when the three Hallows were gathered once more. Appearing as a huge Saint Bernard dog, Harry stated the Cloak's minor properties before draping it over the lass' shivering form. She would be rescued soon after.

As he was about to leave Remnant's mortal plains, he paused. He decided to make a token attempt at gifting his home planet with the Story once more. It would most assuredly be futile, but the Story was sacred among Minions, and he was disappointed that successive civilizations had dismissed it so completely.

Appearing in the house of a dozing playwright in Vacuo, Harry performed a wandless Legilimens spell and gave the woman a vivid dream of the original Story, set to dominate her waking hours until she penned it down. Magic of Harry's generation did not exist on Remnant, except for the Hallows now, and their owners would know no magic. Consequently, the Story never inspired a hunt for the Hallows and would merely be treated as a sub-par fairy tale.

* * *

Final farewells between Minions have traditionally been cheery for several reasons.

Firstly, there is no worry over whether they will move on to Hell or Heaven, because both are denied to Minions. When a Minion retires, he is given exactly one more mortal lifetime with no subsequent reincarnations. Approximately half choose not to bother with another life on mortal soil, and so are placed within a foetus one second before it is destined to die. The others are reborn in a world to their liking, with a lifespan of their choosing. Keeping their memories is optional, and special supernatural abilities can be bestowed within certain limits. This is Death's boon to her darling agents.

Secondly, there are no regrets between Minions. Partings between mortals are tearful when they harbour guilt not atoned for or deep affections not fully expressed, yet do not know if or when they will reunite. Minions, in their long lives, have ample time to completely articulate their emotions, and to receive closure when their recipients answer.

Finally, if Minions choose to make use of such a resource for farewell parties, the alcohol and pubs in the Realm are to _die_ for. There is an appropriate drink for absolutely everyone. For the quiet ones, there are classy diners like Eden Hall. For the rowdy ones, well, nobody ever walks away from a good bar fight angry.

* * *

Lady Death and her Minion Harry Potter sat across from each other at a corner table in the tavern of the World's End inn. A soft buzz of conversation surrounded them, as numerous other customers told tales and made deals. Death had a glass of aged Amrita, and Harry, a tankard of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Like old friends, they chatted about everything and nothing - about the scratched Galleon, the last Calvinball tournament, the possible futures of Harry's world, Death's worry over her stubborn brother Dream…

Hours later, Harry dozed off. As a wistful smile graced the pale Lady's face, she raised her right hand, touched her thumb to her index finger, and flicked her wrist down. An ethereal panel flashed into being, reminiscent of a computer's context menu. With confident motions, she brought up an array of screens and pruned the Minion's soul and memories to mortal standards, before ejecting the Babel fish and giving him Remnant's dominant language.

The overarching theme for Harry's chosen death was simple enough to understand. He had been manipulated to suffocating levels as a mortal, and necessarily manipulated many events as a Minion. He now wanted a mostly passive spectator role, away from the limelight, but wished to indulge in his love for learning and teaching.

With a final caress of Harry's messy hair, Death banished him from her Realm, never to return. She brought forth a papyrus scroll and re-read it, although she already knew every word of it, carefully etched by Harry's own hand:

 _…I wish to retain the memories of my first lifetime, from childhood until the moment I stepped through the Veil._

 _I wish to retain no memories of my service. This, I emphasize, is not out of spite or regret, because Death my Eldest Mother, Eldest Sister and Eldest Friend has been my beacon and harbour, because Marvin my Guide has been an excellent companion despite and because of his moods, because the Realm and its peoples have treated me well._

 _My Lady willing, I ask to only know with certainty that I served her and did so to her liking, and I ask to remember her image, insofar as a mortal can understand her Endless beauty._

 _I request to retain the ability to possess living beings. I wish to wander for one dozen years the planet which once birthed me, to learn it as one would learn the back story of a new game, before being anchored to a human host. Destiny the Eldest of All willing, I request that this host's mortal time be helped and not hurt by my presence. I will sleep the Last Sleep when this soul dies, one mortal lifetime later. These conditions, I wish to remember…_

 **Chapter 4 End**


	5. Ch05 Ghost in the Machine

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 5: Ghost in the Machine**

Wandering the lands of Remnant for a decade did little to lower his fondness for his birth planet. It was very different from the magical and Muggle worlds of his time, and he sometimes wondered how much time had passed since, and how the old kaleidoscopic vibrancy had degenerated into this almost two-dimensional world, and why he could feel or use no magic at all. Even so, it was fascinating. People had cobbled together old and new technologies in creative ways, and some supernatural feats had been replicated despite the dearth of Wizarding magic.

He idly reviewed his abilities. He alternated between exploring Remnant as an untethered, invisible ghost, and staying in a host body of flesh and blood. With but a thought, he could open himself to the native soul and experience whatever it did - see, hear, touch, smell, taste, emote, think and even dream. With intense effort, he could move the body in a clunky fashion, but it brought back memories of Tom Riddle's malevolent possessions, so he abstained from this power.

Hosts only became aware of Harry's presence when Harry allowed it. In his first attempt at conversing with a host, he had discovered to his irritation that he could not modify or erase memories. Being exposed as a possessing spirit was not on his list of priorities, and it had taken some quick thinking to convince the host that he had been hallucinating. Since then, he had only spoken to the intoxicated, the insane or the dreaming, so Remnant was none the wiser regarding his existence.

As a free spirit, he had ascended through the cloud cover and observed the shattered moon. It was probably the same Moon from his first life, but he was uncertain. Synchronous rotation from tidal locking had caused the far side of his Moon to always face away from Earth. Remnant's moon had no such restriction, and he observed some half-hearted attempts at deriving quantities like the moon's moment of inertia before losing interest. When he attempted to float to the moon to view it up close, he found he could not leave the upper atmosphere - he was probably anchored to the planet, and that was its boundary.

The oceans held a great deal of plant and animal life, with a smattering of aquatic Grimm which lingered just below the water surface and kept to sunny regions. The Grimm took gargantuan forms which recognizably resembled fish, dolphins, octopi and once, a starfish, and seemed to eat the marine life-forms only sparingly, yet approached ships and swimmers with frenzied vigour. He could not view the deeper waters as a free spirit due to a paucity of light sources, and possession of a variety of deep sea rays proved nauseating and disorienting.

On land, there were four kingdoms - Vacuo, Vale, Mistral and Atlas - which had erected high and sturdy walls. A handful of small fiefdoms existed, always located close to a kingdom, and they functioned like satellite towns. Uninhabited lands between kingdoms contained forests and deserts at varying elevations, and a dreadfully low number of plant and animal species. This was more than compensated for by a staggering number of Grimm species and sub-species.

After preliminary research, Harry could name a few Grimm species, the way a ten-year-old might be able to point out animals in a zoo. The Grimm seemed to be corruptions of almost every animal species from his old world, but for every Grimm shape he could correlate with animals he knew, there would be at least two more of bizarre and alien forms. Furthermore, astronomical numbers of each Grimm densely carpeted the land, until much of the land appeared to be a roiling sea of black. Every one of these Grimm, Harry knew, would slaughter humans on sight.

Unsurprisingly, transport between kingdoms was almost totally reliant on air and sea routes.

Harry used his ability of possession extensively. Mostly, he would expand his consciousness to fit the entire host body, so that when the host sensed, thought or moved, it would feel like Harry was doing all of it too. Sometimes, he conjured a mental living room and received the host's sight and hearing through a large television with surround sound, optionally hacking into the other senses in various ways. Having been deprived of physical contact and breadth of experience in his previous life, Harry thoroughly enjoyed his ability.

Ensconced in a barista's body, Harry watched and felt his host prepare drinks with graceful nimbleness. He/They conversed with the customers, gave directions to lost tourists and diplomatically brushed off a seductive college girl.

As a teacher, he/they lectured a roomful of brats on grammar, and threw a piece of chalk at a sleeping boy; as another teacher, he/they discussed philosophy with an undergraduate owl Faunus; as yet another teacher, he/they demonstrated reactions between the alkali metals and Water Dust to an enraptured audience.

At the Schnee Dust Company mines, he possessed a raccoon Faunus miner, temporarily gaining excellent night vision. Halfway through his/their backbreaking labour, he/they caught a faint whiff of toxic fumes and shouted at the other miners to get to safety. He/they got into an argument with a human supervisor who claimed to see and smell nothing. Harry hopped into the man and inwardly winced as he/they sneered at the ungrateful, filthy beast and flogged it with an electrically-charged baton.

Huntsmen and Huntresses were trained fighters whose primary job was to exterminate the Grimm, and Harry was intrigued by their livelihood and Auras. In his travels, he learnt that untrained souls had a wholly homogeneous _flavour_. Some hermits meditated and tried to manipulate their souls to segregate into two _flavours_. It was the equivalent of forcing purple paint to form pockets of red paint and pockets of blue paint - exceedingly difficult because both fluids were so miscible. In fact, Harry only witnessed one person achieve this.

According to Harry's old knowledge, a soul was its own element; if a soul, for argument's sake, was particulate, then they would all be soul particles. Horcruxes tore off chunks of the soul, aggregations of the soul particles, but soul particles were indivisible, not like how atoms can split into protons, neutrons and electrons. Separating a soul into two energies should have been impossible, and Harry did not know why this generation of humans could do it.

In any case, once the soul had been fractured thus, it was child's play to get the two _flavours_ to resonate, emitting holy-tinged energy as light. This light of the soul was named Aura. Virtually all extant Aura users had had their souls split by another's intentional infusion of Aura, in a manner similar to electrolysis, instead of through the considerably more difficult meditative method.

Aura users were fairly in tune with the souls and Aura intensity within their bodies, and would no doubt detect the intrusion by Harry's soul. Over time, he learnt to alter his wavelengths slightly out of phase, so that he could enter a body's material space, without fully integrating into its soul-body connections. It still allowed him to receive the host's sensations, but they became far less vivid.

Harry also found that possessing the Grimm was highly unpleasant. They were alive yet soulless, akin to trees and slugs, and Harry had not expected to be able to possess them. Once inside the Grimm, it felt like their physical bodies were desperately trying to digest his soul. Their rudimentary senses and thoughts were not worth the sense of malevolent hunger that came with possessing them.

When twelve years had passed on Remnant, Harry knew he would be meeting his 'special someone' soon.

 **Chapter 5 End**


	6. Ch06 One Plus One

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 6: One Plus One**

Since an hour ago, Harry had become aware of a new gut feeling. In his free spirit form, his senses had blurred slightly, but certain things induced a sense of urgency. He soon noticed that they were all directional cues. One arrow on the road would appear a shade brighter, or a leaf on the ground would be blown in a strangely important direction. He followed the cues as well as he could.

He was now inside a riot policeman standing behind a barricade set up by the Vale Police Department. It was another Faunus rights protest, and this one was being held in the commercial district, near a Schnee-owned mall. He/they looked around in resentment at the protesters. When his/their scornful gaze fell upon a young cat Faunus brandishing a large picket sign, her golden eyes flashing angrily, Harry knew she was The One.

An effortless hop later, he was looking out her eyes at the police barricade.

* * *

The next day, she/they looked on worriedly as a group of older human children surrounded her on some unseen signal in a back alley. Harry watched in alarm as they proceeded to punch and stone his host, before manhandling her and throwing her into the path of an approaching car. He could feel her pain, and while this was far from a Cruciatus, it was far beyond what a young girl should be exposed to. Windshield cracked and blood-stained, the vehicle stopped for several seconds before speeding off in a cloud of smoke.

Harry Potter, former Master of Death (no longer aware of the Minion title), intangible and bereft of healing magic, frantically ran through his options as his host took shuddering gasps of breath. He did not have the Elder Wand by which to patch her up, or a Cloak to hide her from Death. Even if he moved her body, there would be no way she could crawl to a hospital or even call for help. Perhaps he could hop into another host and convince them to help. Better yet, he could force their body to help.

Twisting and pulling and pushing his soul forcefully, he discovered with mounting despair that he could not leave. His soul was sewn to the girl's body in the same way a mortal soul is stitched to a mortal body during its lifetime. Only after the girl had died would both their souls' stitches unravel.

He had no Aura - he had done the meditation and known beyond reasonable doubt that his kind of soul was elemental and could not achieve the segregation required for Aura generation. But in his desperation, he obeyed his instincts.

Clearing his mind with an empty sky devoid of stars or moons, an image he had used in his early forays into Occlumency, he made the void vast and Endless to a degree he had never achieved in his first life. Bringing forth every memory he had on lightning, he forced the crackling energy into the void.

He was staring at the ceiling of the Great Hall, as the biggest thunderstorm of the decade rolled across the sky. He was two years old and screaming because Aunt Petunia had tossed him and a hairdryer into the bathtub and there was light arcing everywhere, but an invisible person cradled him and consoled him and refused to let him die. Luna was crying as she taught him the electrocution hex that had claimed her mother. He was dragging his tired feet on a carpeted floor and felt a sting when he touched a doorknob. His scar, a Sowilo rune branded on his head by fate itself, was burning bright as he pushed his magic against Voldemort's failing shield.

All of the buzzing and flashing energy was condensed into the shape of a jagged harpoon. He forced himself to believe that he was his soul, his soul had memories, his memories had lightning, his lightning was a harpoon and that harpoon was him.

Summoning the intent and strength of will he had once used to smash through a cackling Dumbledore's mental shields, as though to preparing to cast a Legilimens spell, he threw not his magic into his prey's mind, but _himself_ into the girl's soul. Her soul was violently electrocuted and emulsified into the two _flavours_ and began to resonate, generating the light of Aura. As he felt her numerous wounds begin to close, Harry's consciousness blacked out.

So it was that Harry Potter saved Blake Belladonna by letting her save herself, helped and did not harm her, and quite accidentally anchored himself to her body, soul and destiny.

* * *

When he awoke, Harry identified that Blake was alone in her dingy, tiny room in the White Fang headquarters. As he mentally shook off the last of his drowsiness and yawned, he felt Blake stiffen. She held up a face mirror, stuck out her tongue, saw her reflection do the same, and frowned. She wriggled her fingers and toes and Harry felt how _she_ felt everything felt normal. She shook her head vigorously but that fuzzy thing in her head that seemed like it had opened its eyes a few moments ago did not go away.

 _Ah_ , Harry muttered mentally when he realized the gig was up.

The young girl's eyes widened. "Hello?"

 _Hello._

"What the flipping fish?"

 _What the flipping fish?_ Harry echoed.

"Hello?" _Hello?_

"Pink." _Pink._

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." _Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious._

More privately, he thought, _Dear Merlin, what did this girl read?_

"One plus one is three." _One plus one is three._

"I'm a girl and I'm proud of it." _You're a girl and you should be proud of it._

She face-palmed.

"Are you my split personality?" _I doubt it. Does a split personality know that it is a split personality?_

"Are you my ancestor or a time-travelling me?" _I am most certainly not you, but I do not know who my descendants might be._

"Then are you a paedophile gigolo looking for your next…" _No, and that was uncalled for. I passed on before my children grew up. Also, the word you wanted to use was probably 'libertine' or 'Casanova'._

Her feline ears drooped in shame.

"Sorry." _You are forgiven. It was a fair response to my poorly worded statement._

"But were you the one who saved me? By unlocking my Aura?" _Yes._

"So are you my guardian angel?" _No. I have never seen an angel, for that matter._

"Then who are you? What are you? Why did you save me?"

He paused. _That will require a lengthy explanation. Please humour me first. How much do your friends know about your altercation?_

"They knew I was injured because my clothes were stained and torn. I said that a bunch of human kids beat me pretty badly and I couldn't see straight. Someone whispered to me that he was sorry he couldn't help me more, and that I would live if I was lucky. Then he unlocked my Aura. People do that, you know? Aura can force a badly hurt person to die slowly and painfully, and some freaks get a kick out watching that. The adults are pretty angry and arguing if they should retaliate against human kids."

 _I see. Thank you for keeping me a secret. Is it too late to tell you I'm your super-secret split personality?_

The indignant Faunus screwed up her eyes and imagined a pair of boxing gloves pummelling an invisible man, unsure if that flea-bitten, stinky, cootie-filled mongrel in her head could receive it. Harry chuckled.

Over the next few hours, Harry explained the gist of his situation. Long ago, Remnant had been called Earth. He was from Earth, and had lived to adulthood performing magic, after which he had served a death deity, although he did not remember this service. Recently, he had wandered Remnant for a few years and was now bound to her as a sort of guide-companion. ("Guide dog," she giggled.) He also explained his powers, although they seemed to have changed.

Blake, in return, revealed how she had been orphaned in a Grimm attack, and a family friend had inducted her into the White Fang. She also said that, having only lived for seven years, she did not have many fantastic tales to tell like a disembodied old man past his prime (Harry huffed at this). This was followed by a highly detailed, lengthy lecture on her favourite book, tuna sandwiches, her current book, that stupid bull Faunus boy who kept pulling her hair, the book she wanted to read next, why lentils were evil and the book that a privacy-invading old man might enjoy, if he cared for his education at all - because anyone who would suggest putting tomato sauce on tuna was clearly uneducated.

By midnight, they were comfortable with having a purely mental conversation, and could mentally blow a raspberry. They decided to test Harry's dream-walking another time, and bade each other goodnight.

* * *

The pair awoke before sunrise and Blake padded to the common bathroom in semi-darkness with practiced ease. Dormitories in the White Fang headquarters and chapters were spartan and only dimly lit by human standards. Night vision meant that the "EXIT" signs pointing to the stairwells illuminated entire corridors comfortably. Lamps afforded stronger lighting in the rooms, but members regularly went for meetings, protests or recruitment drives, so on most days, the dorms would only have a handful of occupants.

Blake paused in suspicion while brushing her teeth and Harry sensed her question before it was even mentioned.

 _Harry?_

He whistled.

 _Harry Potter._

An image of twiddling thumbs reached her mind.

 _Dingbat, geezer, has-been…_

 _Hey!_

 _You deserved it. You know, the bathroom's pretty dark. The cubicles will be even darker._

 _Indeed._

 _You can't see me shower, can you? Or do other stuff?_ She scrunched up her face and did her best not to think of the water closet. _Pink polar bear, blue hippopotamus, pink polar bear, blue…_

 _My vision is derived from your eyes, child. You have excellent night vision._

 _But that's just wrong! You're in the girl's bathroom! You'll see everything!_

 _Firstly, I have been to a girl's bathroom, where I spoke to living and dead girls, and may or may not have done some illegal things. Secondly, I've showered my children before. Thirdly…_

He sent the image of a surfboard, then an ironing board, then an aircraft carrier. A highly affronted look crossed the girl's physical face.

 _Can't you close your eyes? And cover your ears? Or just go to sleep?_ she thought stubbornly.

 _Sleeping would solve the issue, but I can't go to sleep at the snap of a finger. Also, we tested this last night. I can, with great effort, dull my perception of your senses slightly, but it is nowhere near the level of detachment I could have achieved before._

Resignation flooded her mental plains. _Could you do that, at least until I'm used to this?_

 _I shall. It occurs to me that you can pretend that I am a rubber duck. An innocent, talkative and hopelessly attached rubber duck in your bathtub which sometimes happens to look at you. Getting an actual rubber duck could help this visualization._

She continued her morning rituals thoughtfully. White Fang bases did not have bathtubs and she did not want to spend her meagre Lien on a toy animal. In time, however, she would almost exclusively address the little voice in her head as Ducky, much to Harry's chagrin.

 **Chapter 6 End**


	7. Ch07 You Scratch My Back

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 7: You Scratch My Back**

Understanding - Harry more so than Blake - that they were essentially in an arranged marriage with no chance of divorce, and that fights would be an absolute nightmare, Blake and Harry discussed their options and drew up some guidelines for their relationship.

The bookworm knew her Ducky was well-informed, and had no qualms about being her personal fountain of knowledge. She liked to read and learn, but she recalled novels where a hero would be handed some insurmountable foe and isolate himself in some family manor to feverishly master all sorts of esoteric subjects, perhaps with some Hyperbolic Time Chamber or time-looping device. If Harry worked out the new glitches in his dream-walking, she could train with him twenty-four seven and become Remnant's youngest polymath.

She did not need or want such a life. Growing up healthy, having a job which helped people, getting married and having kids, and retiring sounded much better. She asked for Harry to stay by her side as a friend more than a mentor or parent.

Harry wanted to appreciate this world as a non-celebrity. Being a companion for this girl was more than acceptable. Floating through Remnant for the past decade had felt lonely at times.

* * *

 **Age 7-10**

Education in Vale was compulsory at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Most citizens studied in institutions catering to each level, but a few were home-schooled. Fees for state-owned elementary and middle schools were fully subsidized, while high school students were subject to means testing. Blake currently attended Bunsen Elementary.

By and large, she was ahead in her classes. Harry wondered why she did not skip grades, but was told that only the rare well-heeled and well-connected student did so. Teachers turned a blind eye when she read extra-curricular books, as long as she did not disturb the class or botch her quizzes. Together, the bonded pair pored over and discussed novels. This became their favourite activity long into adulthood and they would move on to savour textbooks, encyclopaedias, comics and more.

It was from a book that they learnt how to sew. Needles and thread were easily procured, and with practice they became fairly adept at darning, closing rips and attaching buttons. She became sought after in the White Fang headquarters where torn clothes were plentiful and seamstresses few, and she shyly accepted tuna sandwiches, books or other small items when offered in payment.

The idea of Cat's Cradle fascinated Blake - after she had punished Ducky for making yet another pun on her Faunus heritage (she usually slapped him mentally with a paper fan). A lengthy search on the library's terminal revealed that the uncommon game was currently named Marionette, and that the local library a few towns over had recently condemned two books on the subject. A White Fang courier obtained one of them for her during his next trip to the region. None of the children she asked liked the game, and her lucid dreams with Harry somehow could not realistically render the transitions between the game's patterns, so she reluctantly gave up the game.

Blake got over her fear of creepy crawlies only gradually. Harry reasoned that she had no scruples about toying with a squirming house-rat, and cats bravely hunted roaches, lizards and centipedes, ergo her phobia was illogical. She hesitantly agreed, but when the next flying cockroach rebuffed her attempts at vanquishing it by stopping on her face, she broke down and was inconsolable for an hour. After the incident, Harry started a progressive exposure programme in their dreams, in which over many months, they would study increasingly realistic depictions of her hated pests, starting from cartoonish drawings and ending with lifelike constructs.

Older members of the White Fang who were between missions sporadically trained Blake in the manipulation of her Aura, focusing on healing small wounds and improving her strength and speed, so that she could better defend against bullies. She and Harry thought up and experimented with various cantrips for her Aura, and meditated together. At his suggestion, she also engaged in simple calisthenics to keep her body limber and toned, because Aura had a multiplier effect on existing physical prowess.

Whenever he felt that Blake had been spending too much time alone and indoors, Harry would encourage her to explore the outdoors and play with the other children. Actual use of her body trained her kinaesthesia better than exercise could, but Harry explained that more importantly, she had to interact with the world outside of books, and people besides himself. Merlin forbid, if the quiet orphan girl grew up being bullied, only ingratiating others through chores and sewing, she would probably become an emotionally stunted house elf like he had.

She remained friendly enough with her Faunus peers. When she balked at leaving her usual hangouts, Harry coaxed her by making a game out of basic stealth skills, like walking in someone's blind spot, or walking quietly, or looking for cameras.

Harry did not pander to the young girl's every whim, not that she demanded extravagant things of him. Out of curiosity, however, Blake once asked if he could sing, because then they could sing in the shower together. In the past, Harry had been tone deaf, but he reasoned that since he no longer had vocal cords, now he would simply need to think of the right pitch. During his first stanza, Blake squashed her pillow over all four ears and swore she would rather listen to Vorgon poetry, and begged him never to sing in her head again.

Meanwhile, Blake wrestled with the idea that her esteemed White Fang organization was branching out in questionable ways. Agents experimented with corporate espionage, collecting information for blackmail. Nightclubs were set up for revenue, and there was talk of creating gambling dens. None of these were Blake's responsibility. As picket protests became increasingly rowdy, however, she began to participate less often.

* * *

 **Age 11-14**

Graduating from Bunsen Elementary with ease, Blake enrolled in its affiliated Roentgen Middle School. It was free of charge, its academic record was average and she knew that truancy was overlooked unless excessive or the pupil's grades were rock bottom. It was perfect for her, and Harry was amused by her outlook.

In the school's kitchen, they dabbled in baking and cooking, referring to books and assisting the cooks. It was ridiculous how the cooks did not care one whit that she identified herself as a student, wore casual clothes and was around during lesson hours - she imagined an assassin could have poisoned the whole school while patting the head cook on the back. None of the teachers batted an eye the few times she had been harried into helping to serve food.

Using the dreamscape, Harry taught her to dance the basic waltz, tango and foxtrot. Like most girls do at some point, she had fantasized about being a princess and dancing elegantly. However, she did not trust anyone to hold her so intimately (Harry did not mention her leaked private thought that she did not want boys to place their booger-laden hands on her). In dreams, she could give herself a palatial ballroom and any kind of fancy dress. Harry did not remember Remnant's dances, and only knew three dances from his time, all of which were unknown nowadays, but Blake was happy enough with those.

Sadly, the dream plane was not all-powerful. Harry attempted to fly with Blake on a broomstick construct, and her dream-body could see and feel well enough, but the inaccurate representation of G-forces during high-speed barrel rolls and various tricks was disconcerting.

She learnt to ride a bicycle in dreams, but was shaky on a real bike. Reluctantly and after copious begging, Harry possessed her body to ride the bicycle until her muscle memory linked with her mental experiences. He had agreed mainly because her early attempts on the dream bicycle had been unspeakably clumsy and while Aura could heal any new wounds, she did not want to go through the ordeal in real life.

The pair had also planned to learn swimming together in dreams, seeing as water resistance was fairly accurate there and they would not drown. After the bicycle fiasco, they decided not to tempt fate by pretending a good dream-swimmer would know enough not to drown in a real pool. Blake took up a basic swimming course in school.

Reasoning that Blake now looked old enough not to be immediately pointed out as a lost child, Harry taught her how to use Vale's bus and subway systems. A few times, Blake succeeded in using her fledging stealth and misdirection techniques to get on board for free, but Harry pointed out that it was not worth risk of the public scrutiny from being caught red-handed, and she could practice elsewhere, so she should just pay the surprisingly low Lien fare.

While reading fiction together through one pair of actual eyes remained high on the agenda, Blake also loved to listen to her Ducky's recollections of his first life, and of the Remnant he had already seen. She learnt of and sometimes looked at his Wizarding World, brimming with diverse Eastern and Western magicks, life-forms and strange adaptations of Muggle technology. She absorbed how the solstices and equinoxes had once been united under the Wheel of the Year; after Harry wistfully intoned the myths behind his festivals like Imbolc, Beltane and Samhain, she insisted on cheap but meaningful, tangible ways to honour them together.

In the present time, sending any object above the upper atmosphere was a taboo and a crime against humanity, a restriction which supposedly began after a long-gone civilization had desecrated the moon. Lamenting the decline of astronomy and astrology, Harry explained to a disbelieving Blake that stars were _not_ mere lights dotting the inside of a sphere (outside of which was Nothing) and that there were eight other planets orbiting the Sun (he named all nine planets, and gave her a mnemonic linking them).

The prominent stars had long shifted beyond recognition, but Harry called up images of the night skies of his time, and reverently described the constellations and their myths. From within Vale, the night skies were always dulled by light pollution. Blake often asked for his skies, and lay beside him on 'Earth' and gazed up at the silent expanse.

At times, they experimented with Harry's kind of magic. Their forays into Vale did not yield any twigs or materials that made Blake's body, soul or Aura respond with the magical _rightness_ \- wands were out. Summoning intent and Aura and speaking incantations, with or without ring-, rod- or stave-shaped objects, did not produce magical effects.

Amateurish attempts at copying published Glyphs (from grimoires of sigil users like Glynda Goodwitch), or meticulously recreating the few rituals and runes Harry knew, yielded no results. Tests using Dust smuggled from the school stores were equivocal with regard to magic, and the pair desisted, lacking in-depth Dust knowledge. Blake had some success detecting ill will or nearby souls using her Aura, but Harry confirmed that this was not the Homenum Revelio spell.

Harry also explained his theories on the difference between souls of his and the current generation, and conjectured how he might have unlocked Blake's Aura. Both parties vehemently agreed that he never try to recreate that miracle with anyone else; they were a team of two, they were happy with their team, and her Aura seemed normal enough to unlock a stranger's Aura.

When Blake first bled the woman's bleed and panicked, Harry calmed her down and told her to discuss it with one of the Faunus women, and obtain pamphlets from the school nurse. After she had gone through the materials, Harry re-explained starting from the basics, using the information he had gleaned from his lifetime and from his possessions on Remnant. Together, they worked through various chapters in physiology and adolescent psychology until Blake had a firm grounding regarding puberty, sexuality, safe practices, contraception and the seasonal Heat that Faunus females inevitably experience. In time, she moved past her embarrassment and began to appreciate attractive people, and periodically engaged in 'girl talk' in real life, but shared only with Harry most of her thoughts.

Members of the White Fang noticed her spotty school attendance, her good physical condition and movements that were unobtrusive even for a feline Faunus. They offered to help her take her fight against Faunus discrimination to the next level, beyond mere picketing. Blake did not fully buy into the idea of violence, but she had vague aspirations of defending Faunus communities in the boondocks from the Grimm.

Roentgen did not have a fighting club, and the dreamscape was inappropriate for learning to fight - reflex times were inconsistent, weapons swung at the speed of thought instead of body, and collision detection depended more on focus than proper Physics. A mace could even be outweighed by a toothbrush, depending on which wielder was exerting a stronger force of imagination. With limited avenues available, she began fight training with White Fang operatives.

They touched on efficient Aura rationing and sparred with her hand-to-hand, and she fiddled with a series of training weapons before deciding on a chain-scythe. It had the ability to attack from improbable angles, and dual-wielding looked cool, but she could only learn from silent, grainy videos and a moderately-skilled user who commuted from another White Fang branch weekly. For years, she mainly used small daggers to spar, while working out the katas and physics of the weapon in her own time.

Regretfully, the dreamscape failed her again because her chain-scythe attacks would fly perfectly in response to her will, instead of erratically due to incorrect movements, but she persevered in real life, adjusting and repeating her flicks for thousands of hours in total.

Infrequently, she tagged along on missions to serve as an innocent distraction, to spy and steal, or to attract young recruits with her youthful looks.

* * *

 **Age 15-17**

Forgoing the conventional high schools, Blake took up distance learning courses after Roentgen. Achieving the minimum age-based curriculum standards set by the Vale Education Ministry was laughably easy, and she had better things to do than being a slave to schoolyard politics.

With Lien surreptitiously pocketed during missions, and an increased allowance from her new roles within the White Fang, Vale became a lot more affordable. She was frugal and needed little, but the main takeaway was learning from elder White Fang members and local housewives how to haggle. The adrenaline rush from bargaining successfully - or even unsuccessfully - sometimes eclipsed the purchase itself, and Blake would resell items at cost to those slogging away in Headquarters. In his old world, Dobby had handled most purchases and he was wealthy enough that discounts mattered little to him, so Harry was impressed.

After much deliberation, she approached Harry shyly on a delicate matter. Previously, she had heard schoolmates brag about having adult merchandise with a sense of superiority. She was still curious about it, but did not want to discuss it with other White Fang members, and definitely did not want to be caught searching for age-restricted content on Headquarters or public computers. Harry guided her to an inconspicuous bookstore he dimly recalled, which luckily was still in business.

Tactfully, he claimed that he very badly wanted to read mature books, but having no body of his own, it was with great regret that he had to coerce her to walk into the suspicious establishment and stain her eyes with the luridly packaged merchandise, before using nefarious skills of disguise and redirection to purchase them. Furthermore, because he had no body, the poor girl would have to read them for him. Blake became a regular customer.

Practicing with the training chain-scythe paid off, and Blake could attack and defend competently against various traditional weapons. Although Harry was not a weapon-smith, he had passing knowledge on metal alloy properties and had witnessed several Hunters break single-form or mecha-shift weapons for careful cleaning. The pair reviewed books and magazines and planned at length before developing a hodgepodge amalgamation of weapons that Blake insisted on calling the Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe, Gambol Shroud.

… _And the sheath is called the Vorpal Cleaver, the pistol is the Jabberwock's Revenge, and…_ she gushed.

 _If you value your social life, please stop the introductions at 'Gambol Shroud'. Your naming sense leaves much to be desired._

Pouting, Blake rebelled by wrapping the ribbon, which she named Truthful Diana, conspicuously on her arm where it would prevent some imaginary evil deity or other from awakening.

White Fang operatives like Adam Taurus sharpened her stealth and dirty fighting abilities, and imparted survival skills like fire-starting, camping, tracking and trapping small game. She quickly learnt to adapt her techniques to take down various Grimm. Harry chipped in with thought experiments on potential routes for ambush and how he would have deployed his Auror squads to counter a variety of foes.

Once, she accompanied a senior operative to Atlas to sign a memorandum of understanding. In the Bullhead, to her superior's utter confusion, she sat quietly and motionlessly throughout the day-long journey, holding two right-angled copper rods. Inwardly, Blake and Harry slumped when the rods did not twitch. They had been attempting dowsing, to detect ley lines, enormous rivers of magic which used to roar across the underground. Dowsing did not require a body's magic, but relied on unfiltered ley line radiation which resonated with cold-drawn copper. Given the distance which they had just tested, ley lines almost certainly no longer existed.

By chance, as most Aura users do, Blake discovered her Semblance: Aura projections. They allowed her to flash away almost instantly, while they remained behind until disintegrating or being destroyed. Stating that Semblances were derived from Aura, which was derived from the soul, which was the sum total of memories, identity, trauma and other things, the instructors told her that only she would know the limits of her Semblance.

Traditionally, an apprentice would meditate on his Semblance's meaning, perhaps discussing it with his Hunting partner. It was rude for strangers to inquire deeply into another's Semblance, and the apprentice would only reveal what he chose about a Semblance's powers and origin.

As the bonded pair studied the subconscious memories which subtly glowed or vibrated when Blake used her Semblance, they hypothesized that it all boiled down to her near-murder at the age of seven. The unmoving projection represented her helplessness, having been paralyzed by fear and grievous injury. Her rapid ejection to another position stemmed from the desire to live. When they discovered that she could modify the elemental alignment of the clones using intent or Dust, they guessed that it had arisen from Harry's non-standard way of cracking Blake's soul using an unstable bolt of lightning, rather than the usual aria used to gently and purposefully direct the giver's Aura.

It was extremely difficult to create clones with shapes other than Blake herself in various poses, with one exception. Copies of living or non-living things, organic or mechanical shapes, large and small either lasted for scant seconds or never took form, but she succeeded in making a small duck construct durable by focusing Harry's presence into it. Harry was astonished when he could move the little thing - it had to stay in contact with Blake, but he could walk the duck all over her body and when the duck snuggled against her, it gave Blake the faint impression of Harry touching her. It was a random breakthrough with no combat advantage whatsoever, but Harry thought it was bloody brilliant.

* * *

Over the years, the intricately linked pair learnt to control their shared thoughts and dreams better. They reached a point where, by default, their independent thoughts were a muffled hum to each other, and they could but would not pry each other. With effort, very private thoughts could be silenced still further, whereas actively chatting with each other required intent but little exertion. Harry was exposed to the full brunt of Blake's physical sensations; to forcibly dull his perception was exhausting, and Blake no longer asked it of him.

With great effort and clearly-formed intent, both were able to forcibly rifle through each other's memories. Because Harry explained that this was the equivalent of mind-rape in his world, and because both felt horrid being on the receiving end, they agreed to practice this only with express consent.

Occlumency barriers protected a soul's mind if it was housed within a physical brain, using the body's magic, against insults from outside the brain. Both of their minds occupied Blake's brain, and Blake's body had no magic for Occlumency barriers; even if it did, the magic could not mutually exclude two minds in the same brain. Harry's old memories had been shaped into a tidy, galactic-level orrery, when the master Occlumens had still wielded magic. Since arriving on Remnant, he stored new memories like all Muggles and Blake did, as heterogeneous smog.

Dreams were tricky to tinker with, but not impossibly so. By default, the pair dreamed independently when their minds slept. Harry explained the spectrum of lucidity. In 'lucid' dreams, the dreamer recognized he was on the dream plane and manipulated its form. In 'foggy' dreams, the dreamer blindly accepted dream images as reality, as though in a mental fog.

Through extensive trial and error, he reworked his cantrips: for becoming lucid in a 'foggy' dream or having a 'lucid' dream in the first place; for 'knocking' on Blake's dream or entering it; and for inviting Blake into his dream or kicking her out. It took enormously more time and effort for Blake to codify her cantrips, and they worked perhaps two-thirds of the time. For a neophyte who lacked formal Occlumency training, shamanic incense and a Pensieve with dream recording apparatus to achieve this was amazing, and Harry made sure she knew he was proud of her.

* * *

All in all, Blake thought that Harry was pretty cool.

 _And I consider you cool as well, in an adolescent perverted feline ninja sort of way_ , he quipped.

Their relationship went both ways. Blake had a confidante in Harry, who was to her a teacher, parent, sibling and friend. Despite her misgivings about being overly dependent or becoming one mixed being, he confidently declared that their senses of identity did not bleed into each other; they were two separate minds in one body that got along well.

Harry had lived a harsh first life, but did not recall the cathartic healing he had undergone on Death's Realm, as her Minion. He had no responsibility or obligation towards this society. But when he raised this talented, sensible young lady any parent would be proud of, he found that he could forgive his past enemies and focus on walking alongside Blake, who still had a future.

* * *

When Blake became increasingly alarmed by the violent nature of White Fang terrorism, Harry was the only person she could confide in. A distant second might be Adam, who had been cordial to her for close to a decade, and was frequently her partner on missions, but his eagerness to fight humankind with a scorched earth policy disgusted her. Hours and nights were spent discussing Blake's sense of righteousness and guilt, and they reviewed Harry's motivations during his own war.

Gambol Shroud smashed a train coupling and Adam's betrayed visage disappeared into the depths of Forever Fall. Using the vestiges of her frayed nerves, Blake ascended a safe-looking tree before she materialized Ducky and sobbed into its almost-feathers for hours, overwhelmed by her feelings of loss and relief.

Months later, the pair almost could not believe their eyes as they clutched the acceptance letter to Beacon Academy.

 **Chapter 7 End**


	8. Ch08 Five Find-Outers and Dog

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 8: Five Find-Outers and Dog**

 _A bow_ , repeated Harry in disbelief.

 _A bow_ , came the affirmative reply.

 _A ruddy big bow with two triangles. Not a beanie, or a beret?_

 _Oh Ducky, you don't understand a girl's fashion at all._

* * *

 **Episode 1, Ruby Rose**

Entering a cramped, musty-smelling apartment located near the slums of Vale, Blake set down her groceries and put on an apron. A soothing tenor voice filled the kitchen when she turned on the radio.

 _I'm going to the weapon store tomorrow to get a new whetstone. Any magazines for you?_

 _Nothing comes to mind. You should get a mail-order catalogue, though._

Ingredients were sliced neatly on the cutting board.

 _It's great that Mrs. Cooper let us put our books in her basement. It would've taken too much time to re-sell all our old books online. Shame we have to give up the apartment._

 _She seems to like you a fair bit, and I don't blame her. She's been ignored by her son for years since he got married, and you've been chatting with her even after she pays you for the chores. Right now she probably wishes she had grandkids like you._

The frying pan sizzled as she gently put in the meat and vegetables and shifted them around with a spatula.

 _Ducky, you're probably sick of hearing this, but I really don't want to stay in the dorms. We don't know how our roommates will turn out..._

 _Try not to dwell on it, Duckling. If they're unbearable, we'll ask for a swap. At worst, we'll search for quiet spots on campus together. Besides, if we keep this apartment and commute to Beacon, we'll have to deal with rent and fares. The dorms are free for scholarship students._

 _I know, I know._

"...Another Dust shop was attacked an hour ago, but passers-by claim the robbers were apprehended by a caped vigilante. The mastermind, believed to be Roman Torchwick, escaped on a Bullhead. He is said to be armed and highly dangerous..."

* * *

 **Episodes 2-3, The Shining Beacon**

Blake peeked over her book to see two approaching girls.

 _Oh mamma mia, that is some_ fine _tuna._

 _Agreed_.

"I believe you two may know each other?" enquired the blonde.

 _Looks like the red beansprout already hooked up with your meal._

"Well Blake, I'm Yang, Ruby's older sister!"

 _Nope, she's still free. You can have the smaller one - she's Gryffindor red_ , smirked Blake mentally.

 _Don't regret it when mine grows up hotter than your tuna pie. Just imagine doing_ things _with those eyes looking up at you._

"…As a girl, I wanted to be just like those heroes in the books…" Ruby offered.

 _Merlin above, Blake, her idealism is painful to hear. Can I get a refund?_

 _You didn't pay for her. Are you throwing away my gift?_

 _No, it's called catch and release._

The sisters were arguing with the pale heiress.

 _They're a noisy bunch. Shall we shut them up?_

Raising the candelabra, the _yukata_ -clad Faunus blew out the flames.

 _Sure. Night, Ducky._

 _Rest well, Blake. It's going to be a long day tomorrow._

* * *

 **Episodes 4-5, The First Step**

"No more awkward small talk or 'getting to know you' stuff. Today, I get to let my sweetheart do the talking!"

 _Go ahead and tell her about Vorpal and Jabberwock. It will be a blast._

 _No way, this girl's bonkers. And I outgrew my delusions phase long ago._

 _Sure you have. You wrap Diana on your arm for, ah yes, accessibility._

"That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

 _That is rather haphazard._

 _Why?_

 _I'm supposed to entrust my life to the first person to ogle me in a forest. Even wild mating rituals have more chance of matching strong partners._

 _You don't have to mate with your partner._

 _Still, I don't want to drag a weakling through four years of school, if I can help it. It should be easy avoiding the eyes. I'll stay in the treetops or something._

* * *

 **Episodes 6-7, The Emerald Forest**

 _Oh look, who do we have here?_ Harry taunted.

"Hello, is anyone out there?"

 _Let's wait till she's proven herself. I admit she's a looker but still..._

 _That would be wise. Two Ursai should be easy enough._

Golden gauntlets blurred into motion, and Yang kept up a steady banter.

 _She's noisy,_ observed Blake.

 _She's alive._

 _Good enough for me._

She flicked out Gambol Shroud with pinpoint precision.

"I could've taken him."

 _And_ I _think my moody Duckling wants you to take her too._

 _Ducky..._

* * *

 **Episode 8, Players and Pieces**

"I can't take it anymore! Can everyone just chill out for two seconds before something crazy happens again?"

 _She's a screamer._

 _Tell me the details when you find out_ , suggested Harry.

 _You'll be watching anyway, don't pretend you won't._

The Nevermore was dragged up the cliff face and promptly lost its mind, messily.

 _You could've given some tips. It was touch and go for a while_ , Blake grumbled.

 _You did say that you wanted to survive Initiation with your own wits._

 _So you were perfectly fine with me facing a giant killer bird with a team of unknowns?_

 _I faced a dragon alone and out-flew it in its domain when I was fourteen. You're seventeen and awesome. I should've distracted you to make it a proper challenge._

 _Touché._

* * *

 **Episodes 9-10, The Badge and the Burden**

They watched Ruby infuriate Weiss with a silver whistle.

 _Ouch. All my ears hurt._

 _I know. They're sort of my ears too._

Turning around at a swishing sound, they saw Ruby looking between Crescent Rose and the torn curtain forlornly.

"Does anyone here sew?" Blake asked hopefully. Heads shook. With a sigh, she picked up her sewing kit.

"Monsters, demons, prowlers of the night..."

 _How is this walrus still a teacher? Does he have tenure?_ Harry ranted.

 _His profile on the Beacon website sounded so promising, too_ , the girl frowned.

 _We'll look at the course curriculum later. I suspect you already know enough to ace the first year theory papers, and maybe even pass the second year's._

Blake thought so as well, although she felt less combative than Harry over Port's seeming incompetence. He was probably recalling his less than stellar luck with Defence professors in Hogwarts.

When Blake had expressed her interest in hunting Grimm, way back in middle school, Harry did not sugar-coat the magnitude and difficulty of this task. This was arguably the most deadly occupation on Remnant. He showed his memories of villagers and Hunters being torn apart or overrun by Grimm. Blake was ready, having watched her own screaming parents being devoured mouthful by mouthful while she was locked in a grandfather clock.

He held her hand as they observed herds of Grimm from several angles - an overhead view, standing in the herd, in front of the herd and even under the herd, as though being trampled. Finally he showed her the nightmarish blanket of Grimm that swarmed the lands between kingdoms. After this, he told her to cool off for another week before saying if she still wanted to risk her neck slaughtering monsters.

She said yes.

They set aside times to read about the Grimm - their anatomy and physiology, their social hierarchies and attack patterns, their relative speed and power. Common and rare Grimm species alike were covered. Harry's first-hand visuals did wonders in helping Blake cement facts. As expected, she had some difficulties with the more pedantic or jargon-laden texts, but together the pair made sense of it all.

Fighting the Grimm was no laughing matter, and this she believed with all her heart. If Professor Port continued to bungle his lessons, he would get everyone killed while he continued to enjoy his tenure and stories of cabbages. She would have to step in and direct her team's Grimm studies, if they showed the same disinterest outside of these Oum-forsaken lessons.

* * *

 **Episodes 11-12, Jaunedice**

Jaune did not suppress his piteous shrieks as Cardin hammered his Aura into the red zone.

 _Pathetic. Why is this clown in Beacon?_ Harry derided.

 _He must have his strengths. The school accepted him, and Ozpin made him a leader._

 _At first, I thought that he was acting, pretending to be weak so he could hide his strengths or motives. You remember Quirrell, do you not? The stutterer who smuggled Voldemort into Hogwarts._

 _Jaune, a terrorist? Surely you jest._

 _It does seem far-fetched now. This boy irks me._

 _Is there something else?_

 _Neville was weak when I first met him, but he took responsibility for his own future. He sought help, and worked himself to the bone. I thought I taught him, but I think he only needed me as an ideal, an inspiration. This boy... This boy, he has no skill, no ambition and is too proud to ask for help. Because of that, he has nothing._

 _Wow, Ducky was really tearing this boy a new one_ , thought Blake privately.

 _Ducky, Harry, you're seldom this angry. What gives?_

Harry paused.

 _Ruby likes him. You know that I only joke about fancying her, but she is our leader and I worry. She always seems cheerful, but I begin to wonder if she has an inferiority complex from being younger than everyone, and if she keeps Jaune around_ because _he is pathetic._

 _I hadn't considered it, but it is logical. And sad._

 _If they decide to go out with such a mindset, it will end poorly. Then your team will be difficult to deal with._

* * *

 **Episodes 13-14, Forever Fall**

 _Go ahead, try the sap. You know you want to._

Looking around, the Faunus saw that no one was watching her. She dipped her little finger in the viscous sap, and licked off the saccharine substance.

 _Yes, yes, let the taste flow through you. Imagine this smeared all over that tuna sandwich in your lunchbox._

She spat out the suddenly vile fluid.

 _Damn it, Ducky!_

Yang was surprised when Blake later traded two tuna sandwiches for her hamburger, but took it in stride.

* * *

 **Episode 15, The Stray**

"Or maybe, we were just tired of being pushed around!"

 _Blake, we should leave, now. They were not ready for this._

 _Ducky, oh Monty, what have I done…_

 _I'll still be with you, Blake, Duckling. Run, now._

Harry could feel that Blake was not as tormented as the time she had left Adam in Forever Fall. Even so, as Blake's catatonic body sat on an unfamiliar rooftop and stared blankly, he extended his consciousness to encompass hers in their equivalent of a hug.

* * *

 **Episode 16, Black and White**

"Are you familiar with the White Fang?"

"…stupid holier-than-thou creeps that use force to get whatever they want…" declared the monkey Faunus, clearly hoping to impress Blake.

 _Lay it into him, Blake. Wait, get the timing right. Eins, zwei, drei, g'suffa…_

"I was once a member of the White Fang."

Sun did a spit-take.

 _Prost!_

"Hey, weren't you in a cult or something?"

 _Emotional depth of a teaspoon, this one._

 _Agreed. I should've brought Yang._

Peeking from behind the cargo containers, Harry could feel Blake's heartbeat quicken.

 _I've got to talk to them. Carrot-top is out of place here. Maybe he's blackmailing the White Fang, or something._

 _Just be careful, Blake._

"Nobody move!" Gambol Shroud pressed against the gentleman thief's neck.

Much later, Team RWBY was gathered.

"I've had twelve hours to think about this. And in those twelve hours, I've decided, I don't care."

Harry felt Blake's fear dissipate and her tense muscles began to relax.

* * *

It should come as no surprise that Ruby would ask her team about how they had created their weapons. That she had postponed this for months was frankly unusual. Ruby herself could not pinpoint why the issue should wait, but a week after the fight at the docks, she felt it was time. Returning to the cliff off which they had been launched for Initiation, Team RWBY sat in a circle, or square, and shared their tales.

Blake briefly explained her weapons training in the White Fang, and how she had admired the unconventional chain-scythe for its versatility. The design and functions of Gambol Shroud had been inspired by several comics. Selecting the building materials had been straightforward, except for the ribbon. She had stumbled upon a metamaterial in a journal published in Atlas, describing a sort of metalloid rubber whose elastic modulus varied with Aura infusion, and her problem had been solved.

 **Ruby Rose**

Ruby was strolling around the village when she came across a large dog, a skin-and-bones waif of a bitch that had just given birth to two pups. The smaller pup gasped with heart-wrenching stridor before expiring.

With nary a rustle, a woman shimmered into being, with blood-coloured irises and cherry pink hair done in two high ponytails. She was clad in a flowery dress of blue and white, her well-endowed figure flaunted by a corset which was decorated with a bronze coin with a central hole. Almost carelessly, she held a six foot tall scythe with a wavy blade.

The stranger fixed an unblinking gaze on a frozen Ruby. Lips slightly parted in wonder, she used the blunt tang of her scythe to prod at Ruby's hood, before lifting up Ruby's chin to have a better view of the young girl's face. Finally regaining her wits, Ruby twisted and ran away, and did not look back.

Inspired yet terrified by the weapon, Ruby asked her uncle Qrow to coach her in its use so that no one would dare hold a scythe to her throat again.

Ruby also mentioned that her distinctive raiment had been passed down for many generations through the maternal line. Traditionally, a mother would drape the hood over her daughter before unlocking her Aura, whereupon the garment would adopt the colour of the descendant's Aura. The hood shrank or grew to fit its wearer and could tear, but slowly mended itself with an application of the user's Aura.

The inside of the cape shimmered with no recognizable colour. Legend had it that the creator had made the inner surface invisible, like the colour of a mirror when it reflected nothing.

 **Yang Xiao Long**

Ember Celica, Yang said, was born from a ring that became two rings that married fire and gold, Huntress and weapon. Never before had she given away Celica's full history, and Ruby had only ever been fed a half-truth of the gauntlets being forged in the workshop of Signal Academy.

When Yang dragged Ruby along on the search for her mother which would nearly kill them both, she tried desperately to fend off the snapping and snarling Grimm with a plain stick. She was short, weak and unskilled, and was pushed to the ground where she cut herself on metal debris. A coldness flowed into her from the cut, not biting or bone-chilling, but a tinged with inexplicable _wrongness_.

As one, the Grimm backed off, warily glancing at each other before preparing to charge Yang again. At that moment, Qrow found the girls, and promptly beheaded and eviscerated the Beowulf herd. Darkness encroaching on the edges of her vision, Yang absently noted that she had been lacerated by a finger ring, and passed out.

She awoke in her own bed, with the ring in her pocket. After Qrow had scolded her for hours, Yang asked if he had picked up anything from her surroundings, and he denied doing so. Over the next few days, she found that whenever she threw away the ring, it would return to her soon after. When she kept her eyes peeled expecting its arrival, it would simply appear before her. The golden ring inset with a matte black stone still chilled her, and made her feel dirty, and thicker clothes did little to warm her.

Soon, it was time for Signal students to create their weapons. Melting the brass, vanadium and a few other metals along with a miniature gold ingot that would make up her chosen alloy, a nagging feeling pervaded her mind. She held out the clingy ring above the crucible, and with a gentle pulse of Aura, both hoop and stone disintegrated and drizzled into the molten mixture. After Yang successfully pounded and shaped the gauntlets, she sat back to admire her handiwork. Then, a small, shallow ripple formed on the right gauntlet, close to the wrist, before fissuring open like eyelids opening, to reveal the black stone.

The gauntlets, in extended or bracelet form, retained the upsetting coldness, but Yang found that if she constantly trickled a sliver of her aura into them, she could counter the feeling. Whenever Ember Celica was damaged and she had to melt and re-forge the segment housing the inky stone, the 'eye-opening' event would repeat itself, and she was highly grossed out by it.

 **Weiss Schnee**

Being the eldest daughter of the Schnee main family meant that Weiss was the heiress of the famous Schnee Dust Company, and it was no great secret from Team RWBY and even Team JNPR that her father, Wilhelm Schnee, scorned her decision to Hunt. She barely gained his consent by pointing out that a physically capable woman would make for a better public face for the company, compared to a porcelain doll.

Presently, she admitted to her team that her enrolment into the premier Hunting academy of Vale was not out of corporate benefit, a wish to help people, or even to Hunt at all. She only desired to master a rapier and had woven a great net of falsehoods to convince her father to employ a tutor. In other words, from the age of six, she had chosen to surrender the best years of her life to a Hunting profession she did not care for, just so that she could hold a rapier.

Most shockingly, this unshakeable obsession with a rapier had begun while watching a third-rate ballet performance.

With a convoluted script, atrocious music and lacklustre lighting, the performance was a disaster. But when a lithe, orange-haired woman outfitted with pale armour began her scripted mock duel using a rapier, Weiss was awestruck.

Linear and oblique attacks were supported by flawless, agile footwork. The fluid blade splashed against a shield with the beauty of a shooting star, then flashed triumphantly as it penetrated the prey's ponderous defences.

The troupe disbanded the next morning, and Weiss never found the swordswoman, or came across any recordings of her prowess.

Years passed and her skill with the rapier bloomed, as a succession of tutors came and left.

Concurrently, her grandfather Wallace Schnee's body slowly failed from age and disease. On his deathbed, he invited Weiss to a game of chess and wagered a single needle.

Weiss knew of this needle, for her grandfather had spoken of it several times in lieu of a bedtime story. Rumours said that it could vibrate, scream or glow a sickly green, but these were unproven. In short, the needle had been found in a mighty Grimm, and had passed through several owners before reaching the owner of the Clementine Dust Group. When Wallace expanded the Schnee Dust Company and bought out the smaller Clementine Dust Group, the innocent-looking needle, in a simple plastic case, was given to him.

After a long game, Weiss won the game.

Reaching a certain level of proficiency with a regular rapier, Weiss was reminded that Huntresses used customized weapons and that she should make and practice with her chosen tool before even applying for Beacon Academy. Reluctantly, she designed a Dust-enabled personal weapon over a few weeks. Hours after she finished her blueprints for Myrtenaster, she relaxed in her room and sleepily fiddled with her needle, whereupon she pricked herself. In a flash of insight, she incorporated the needle into her blueprint. When she finally held the completed weapon, she knew with unfounded certainty that Myrtenaster would be unbreakable until she was broken.

* * *

In the few days following the discussion of weapon origins, Harry was withdrawn. When he finally began to reply a curious and worried Blake in proper sentences, he voiced his suspicions.

 _Your teammates' weapons are fascinating._

 _So is ours. I like mine better. What's troubling you?_

 _They sounded almost magical - my kind of magic._

 _I thought we decided that your magic does not exist on Remnant. Agreed, their stories seem a little far-fetched, but they can be mostly explained by coincidence. And they might have embellished a few things after hearing Ruby's story._

 _Embellished? Why?_

 _Our story was pretty mundane. Then Ruby brought in myths and legends and the supernatural into her story. Weiss and Yang might have thought that it was a game of imagination, and didn't want to lose._

 _I hadn't considered that - maybe I believed them too easily. You're probably right._

 _Between the stories of the Wizarding World, and the fiction on Remnant, either of us could've done it too. Like Gambol Shroud housing a chip of fang from an ancient King Taijitu lurking in a cave under a lake. Or pulling the sword from an anvil in a Deathstalker lair in one of the wastelands. Heck, I could've plagiarized your story of Alice in Wonderland since it does not exist on Remnant, which is a travesty in itself._

Blake doodled an emaciated cat sporting a monstrous toothy grin, before she continued to jot down points from Oobleck's on-going lecture, while Harry lapsed into silence again for the rest of the day.

 _I accept that your argument, that their stories are of questionable veracity, is more likely than magic actually existing on Remnant._

 _Sorry for disappointing you. I know magic still means a great deal to you._

 _Initially I thought of an idea by which we could keep tabs on paranormal events around them when they are not with you. However, the idea on its own still has its merits. Would you like to hear it?_

What he then suggested was phenomenally impractical, with its doubtful success hinging on a large number of assumptions being true. Still, Blake was willing to give it a chance, and they worked on it intermittently for several months.

The crux of the plan was learning how to make constructs with her Semblance which could last longer, without touching her, and could communicate with her. Harry reasoned that Blake could manifest mini-Ducky because of their affection for each other, so the Aura of a suitably close or trusting partner could potentially power one of Blake's constructs. Ruby's dog Zwei was their test subject.

Zwei could generate an Aura, was fairly intelligent and liked Blake. Using her Semblance, Blake managed to push her positive feelings for Zwei into a tick-shaped construct, which latched onto Zwei, sustained by his Aura until Blake plucked off the tick. It was only after she determined how to push a piece of her sense of self into the tick, that she began receiving feedback from Zwei's little rider.

With the proof of concept achieved, Blake explained the potential combat benefits of her ability to the rest of Team RWBY, saying nothing of Harry and magic. Squeamish at the sight of the ticks, the slight sense of revulsion caused the ticks not to take hold properly. When Blake explained that the shape was already ingrained from long practice, they underwent a brief period of graduated exposure training.

 _Our old exposure training took a lot longer_ , Blake whined to Harry. _They haven't seen true horror._

Finally, the ticks attached themselves to her teammates, draining unnoticeable amounts of their Aura for sustenance.

Team RWBY found that they now had a network of crude baby monitors, with Blake serving as a sort of router. Each member constantly and passively broadcasted a faint impression of their Aura levels. Using simple cantrips to focus through Blake, each member could intentionally assess any member's level of Aura depletion.

The ticks did not latch on to Team JNPR, as Blake only considered them acquaintances.

Harry, however, was the real winner. Besides sensing everybody's Aura levels, he could generate an array of mental television screens by which he could see and hear their surroundings, from the person's or tick's perspective - although not to the level of clarity afforded by his coexistence with Blake. Oddly enough, Blake could not access the extended power despite being the core of the network, but after Harry forwarded the sensations to Blake on several occasions for her benefit, she begged off the privilege.

It was confusing and not the least bit romantic to make out with Yang, while looking through Yang's eyes at herself. It was even more disturbing to simultaneously experience both sides when Weiss and Ruby got busy with each other.

 **Chapter 8 End**


	9. Ch09 And Then There Was One

**HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover**

 **You Get a Lifetime**

 **Rating: M**

This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.

Content rating is between T and M.

Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.

Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.

 **Chapter 9: And Then There Was One**

It was a tale as old as time, at least human time. The many civilizations of Earth, before and after Harry's own era, lived and breathed the cyclical tale of war. Remnant, which had not fully healed from the last Faunus war, was a battlefield once more.

In Blake's fourth and final year at Beacon, the ultimate plans of Cinder Fall, Roman Torchwick and a few other sponsors came to fruition. Under cover of nightfall, creatures of Grimm were currently thronging the streets of Vale - not just the city of Vale, but the kingdom of Vale. At the same time, Cinder was leading a group of insurgents on a massacre within the castle of the royal family. Huntsmen, Huntresses and upper-level students from all the fighting schools of Vale, along with the police force, were being deployed by the Central Command.

Faunus combatants, including Blake, were despatched to low light areas to slaughter the Grimm. Various groups had already succeeded in plugging the intentional holes in the kingdom's walls that had allowed Grimm to flood into Vale. The Breach in Blake's first year had merely been, on hindsight, a feasibility study by the insurgents. She was now in one of the slums where electricity and backup power had been disrupted, herding away small groups of Grimm at a time to kill them safely. It was a monotonous task for the fourth year student, for whom a practiced, precise balance of Aura application and regeneration meant that this clean-up was a war of attrition she was not losing.

Amidst the bloodshed, Harry took a back seat, speaking only enough to ensure that boredom did not erode his partner's focus, or to infrequently offer suggestions. If mini-Ducky could leave Blake's side, then maybe he could have helped Blake herd the Grimm. If he had an Aura, he could have handled healing her body's muscular strain and clearing her accumulated lactic acid, while she focused on offence to mow down the Grimm more quickly. If he had magic, he could have conjured a Patronus or transfigured animals to gore the soulless beasts. However, these were flights of fancy, and Blake was capable enough. Harry watched Yang, Weiss and Ruby fight far, far away.

* * *

Yang met with the variegated Neopolitan for the umpteenth time in her Hunting career and showed her progress when she duelled Neo on equal footing, before slowly overpowering the mute girl. Focused as she was on the fight before her, Yang did not dodge a runaway Aura-piercing bullet from an altercation elsewhere.

Within seconds of Yang's right femur being splintered, Neo's umbrella smashed her other femur, her spine and her neck. As Yang lay battered and unconscious on the ground, Neo commanded a small whirlwind of glass shards to cause countless cuts over her opponent's body, and Yang's Aura began to deplete from trying to heal the numerous wounds.

Breathing heavily, Neo eyed the blonde's still-steaming gauntlets with a malicious glint in her mismatched eyes and decided to take a trophy. She could not figure out how to deactivate the gauntlet mode, or to detach the gauntlets. Shrugging, she reasoned that she could just take both arms now and solve the conundrum later. Neo gripped Yang's limp right arm and began to circle her.

 _Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, here we go round…_

With the first rotation, Yang's wrist dislocated. With the second rotation, her elbow twisted open with a pop. With the third rotation, her shoulder left its socket. All of a sudden, Neo's hands started to bubble and char where they held the gauntlet. In silent horror, Neo flailed frantically as an excruciating wave of necrosis slowly blackened her flesh starting from her palms. Many agonizing minutes later, she was dead.

Still floating in mid-air, Yang's right gauntlet tilted as its stony black eye swept its gaze over her body, which no longer breathed but still pumped blood, weakly. Both gauntlets flared and melted, before flowing into the numerous cuts and burrowing through flesh to coat all her bones, uniting shards and fragments as needed. A golden ring, inset with a matte black stone, reformed on her right index finger. Her body glowed.

Yang breathed again.

* * *

Weiss was barely holding her own against Cinder. Myrtenaster was nearly out of Dust, and after it did so, the blade would no longer be able to pierce Cinder's flaming shields. Numerous fights and now a speedy opponent who threw incinerating attacks in unfair quantities took a toll on Weiss, who was now dangerously dehydrated. Vision blurring, she glimpsed her partner's red hood sidle towards Cinder from a blind spot, and took a gamble.

A short round of frenetic parries and thrusts ensued. Keeping her face blank, Weiss opened up a gaping hole in her own defence and winced as Cinder hacked off her leading left arm just below the elbow. Scant milliseconds later, Crescent Rose sliced smoothly through Cinder's slender neck.

Myrtenaster cracked and fell apart before it even hit the floor. The red and white Huntresses stared at the biggest remaining piece of the Multi-Action Dust Rapier, a fifteen-inch long knobbly rod, shaped almost like a branch or twig but in the blade's native metallic colour. Weiss wrapped the fingers of her remaining hand around the piece, but it crumbled into nonexistence and left only a familiar needle. She wordlessly slipped the needle into her high-heeled boot.

* * *

By dawn, the war was over.

* * *

 **Epilogue**

Weiss graduated from Beacon Academy but did not Hunt afterward, instead preparing to take over the mantle of the Schnee Dust Company. Timely first aid, appropriate preservation, her Aura and subsequent skilful surgery allowed Weiss to reattach her dominant left arm, but it did not regain its original level of function. Use of her right arm during her left arm's healing process meant that she became somewhat ambidextrous, with incomplete dexterity in both arms, but she got by satisfactorily. Her needle was fashioned into a brooch, which she gave Ruby in place of an engagement ring. She said emphatically that Ruby had won her heart, although Ruby protested that Weiss also had her Dusty hooks on her own. Neither spoke of the needle's violent lineage to others.

Yang underwent a scan, which showed that every bone except for her skull was now coated and infused with metal. She declared that Ember Celica had driven a _hard_ bargain, but she had feared that if her skull became any _denser_ , Ruby might think she was a bimbo. Just for that remark, Ruby hid all of Yang's death metal albums for a month. With extensive physiotherapy, Yang recovered to an athletic level despite her increased mass, and became a combat teacher at Signal Academy. She gave her mysterious ring to Ruby, hoping it would protect the working Huntress.

Blake continued to Hunt for a few years after marrying Yang, before taking a sabbatical. After consulting with Harry, both agreed that there was no chance that Harry would be reincarnated as her child. Both of their souls were stitched to Blake's body firmly, and his eventual fate was to die with her and never be reborn. She told Yang that she would carry their marriage's pregnancy. Harry laughed at her curses and winced at the mutually felt contractions during her labour, then expressed relief when she did not name her sprogs Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When the twins were old enough to attend elementary school, Blake returned to the Hunt.

Team RWBY decided to hold on to the ticks generated by Blake's Semblance. Zwei, tail wagging cheerfully, accepted a tick as well.

* * *

One calm and quiet night, at Harry's urging, Blake visited Ruby at her house. It transpired that Ruby had been experiencing occasional oddities during her missions, and Blake would be the first person to whom she described the phenomena in detail.

Sometimes, younger Grimm would swarm her in highly berserk patterns, while older Grimm would stare at her motionlessly as she cut them down.

Her red Aura was marred by a single lime green blotch, which changed in size or shape. Her hood now had a permanent green trim of the same shade.

Among other effects, the weirdest had to be stumbling upon single rose petals, not from her Semblance, inscribed with a variety of emoticons, and hearing laughter when she picked them up. This was almost certainly not Weiss' doing, because she hated emoticons with a passion.

At Harry's suggestion, Blake asked if Ruby knew the story of the Deathly Hallows. Indeed she did, but the version she had heard as a bedtime story and now recounted to Blake was a mosaic of different tales, having mutated through retellings. The cat Faunus told her as much.

"There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road at twilight."

 _In time, they reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across_ …

As one, the bonded pair recited the Story in its original glory, neither missing a word, nor stumbling.

… _It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son._

"And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life."

Upon hearing the tale, Ruby understood and believed it on a deep, instinctual level. She pinned on Weiss' brooch over her heart, took Yang's ring off a necklace and slipped it on, and raised her signature hood, whereupon her entire being flickered into invisibility. Crescent Rose rippled into existence in mid-air and unfolded into its scythe form.

"Bee's knees, right?" she whispered in wonder.

 **FIN**

Thank you for reading.

* * *

 **Acknowledgements**

Shout-outs:

Alice in Wonderland / American McGee's Alice (Vorpal Cleaver, Jabberwock, Cheshire Cat), Despicable Me (Minion title), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Marvin, Babel fish, Gargleblaster, Vorgons), Sword Art Online (Aincrad, Asuna, rapier skills, context menu)

Minor shout-outs / Seldom mentioned:

Bartender (Eden Hall), Beauty and the Beast (Tale as Old as Time), Calvin and Hobbes (Calvinball), Digimon (Blue Digizoid), Dilbert (Pointy Haired Boss), Dragon Ball (Hyperbolic Time Chamber), Enid Blyton (Five Find-Outers and Dog), Koschei (needle in the Nevermore), Mary Poppins (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious), Oktoberfest (Eins, zwei, drei, g'suffa, prost!), Soul Eater (stitching and sewing a soul), Ten Little Injuns (And Then There Was One), Touhou Project (Onozuka Komachi), The Last Question (MULTIVAC), Two-Face (marked coin), Type-MOON (NRVNQSR), Wonder Woman (Diana's Lasso of Truth); Atari, Boggle, Scrabble, Bunsen, Roentgen, Conway's Game of Life


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